Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Lower turnout bad for higher education

CARSON CITY - Lawmakers and higher education officials swallowed hard Friday while reviewing updated enrollment figures for the state's universities and colleges.

It was as they feared - flattening enrollment rates at four of the state's seven higher education institutions means Nevada lawmakers will have to choose between slashing budgets or shelling out more than twice as much money from state coffers than previously expected.

Hardest hit will be the state's two research universities, UNLV and UNR, and the Community College of Southern Nevada, which is already severely underfunded. Because of the loss of revenue because of softening enrollment, the higher education system will need $47 million more from the state just to fund programs at their current levels.

Higher education officials looked to lawmakers for help, and were met with shrugs.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno and chairman of the joint Senate and Assembly finance committees, told university presidents that before lawmakers considered filling the gap in funding, they would need to show him how they were going to cut costs.

"You are going to need to make some tough choices," Raggio said.

Raggio, Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley and other lawmakers raised several questions about how higher education was funded during the three-hour budget hearing.

Raggio and Buckley, D-Las Vegas, criticized the Nevada System of Higher Education's reluctance to raise tuition, and its continued insistence on keeping more of those dollars at the institutions rather than reverting the money to the general fund.

In direct opposition to a directive from the state's joint finance committee in 2005, the Board of Regents approved fee increases for the next biennium that whittle away at the state's 64 percent share of the funds.

Raggio and Buckley said they would have no choice but to take away the difference - $12 million - from whatever they approved in funding for higher education.

System administrators say it is hard to sell the tuition increases to students if they cannot immediately see the improvement in their education.

All of the questions raised by lawmakers are valid, and fundamentally point to a need to revamp how higher education is funded, said Dan Klaich, executive vice chancellor, and Jane Nichols, vice chancellor for academic and student affairs. A 2004 Legislature-mandated study into the state of higher education raised similar questions and recommended that lawmakers overhaul how it is funded.

Three outside consultants warned regents and lawmakers that if the state wanted to advance the research missions and the selectivity of the state's two universities, they could no longer rely on a funding formula that focused on student enrollment. The flat attendance numbers at the state's universities are in part caused by more stringent admission requirements and increased requirements for the Millennium Scholarship.

The consultants said the state also needs to consider raising its tuition with a concurrent look at increasing financial aid if it wants to improve the quality of education.

A bill to authorize a follow-up study failed.

"The problems we are grappling with now were all raised in that report and could have been addressed between the sessions," Nichols said.

Klaich said he hoped lawmakers' questions would lead to better funding policies.

Meanwhile, the institutions are bracing for the worst.

UNLV stands to lose $25.4 million below its current funding levels in the 2008-09 biennium, which would mean cuts across the university, President David Ashley said. The first step would be to freeze hires, which would affect its ability to pursue its research mission, increase class size and limit the number of class sections it could offer. That would, in turn, make it more difficult for students to get the classes they need and to graduate on time.

If the Legislature decides to compensate for the loss of enrollment revenue, UNLV still needs to better anticipate student demands, Ashley said. For so long, UNLV's student body was growing by 7 percent a year, and long-range budget planners tried to create programs in advance of that growth. As a result, the university became dependent on enrollment growth that could not be sustained.

The flattened enrollment will cost CCSN about $3 million over the biennium, but the impact will be far greater because the college is already underfunded by an estimated $21 million, President Richard Carpenter said. He said he is not sure what the college can cut.

CCSN had initially requested equity funding to help meet that gap. Now, they hope at least that the Legislature will keep their funding the same.

"We're not starting on a level playing field," Carpenter said. "We're way behind, and when you cut when you are way behind, you can never catch up."

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